COMPAQ'S FRENCH POCKET PC AD WINS DISGRACEFUL AWARD What's a girl going to do with a pocket PC except use it for make-up? August 6, 2001(San Francisco, CA) - Two of the world's biggest high-tech companies, Compaq and Microsoft, have teamed up to place flagrantly sexist ads for Compaq's iPAQ Pocket PC running Windows in French publications. Assuming that French women are more concerned about make-up than mark-up language, the ad displays a photo of a glamorous blonde checking her lipstick by using the back-side of Compaq's Pocket PC. For a copy of the ad, see the attachment. The French copy under the photo of the scantily dressed model roughly translates, "iPAQ Pocket PC. All the functions of a PC plus others you'll discover along the way." The DisGraceful Award in Advertising was established by Gracenet, a networking group for women in high tech and business media, to draw attention to the outrageously sexist portrayal of women in high tech publications and to promote positive change. So far, several large companies, including IBM/Lotus, InfoUSA, and LikSang International, have pulled ads from publications after receiving the DisGraceful Award from Gracenet. Gracenet, a California nonprofit, was founded in 1997 to encourage women in high tech and business media, and includes over 1,000 members who attend monthly meetings in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. For more information on Gracenet and past DisGraceful awards, see ww.gracenet.net or contact founder Sylvia Paull at whoisylvia@aol.com (510)547-1116.

Because there's a prevalent "sex sells" tone in advertising in France, you might expect GraceNet, a group of women in technology who police sexist ads, to take a pass on this one: a blonde is using the iPAQ Pocket PC as a mirror. Wrong.

The ad, which appears in French magazines for a Compaq product that runs Microsoft's Windows, has been deemed "flagrantly sexist" by GraceNet, and both companies have received the Bay Area nonprofit's "DisGraceful Award in Advertising" for August.

GraceNet (www.gracenet.net) is a networking group of about 1,000 women in technology and related fields, many of them in management positions, largely in the Bay Area. Members meet monthly in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

The DisGraceful Award was created, GraceNet says on its Web site, "to alert the public that the high-tech industry includes a great number of professional women who are offended by sexist advertising."

Previous recipients include InfoUSA, a database service company in Omaha, Neb., for a January ad that featured a blonde dominatrix wearing a black mask and a dog collar.

Last September, the award went to Lik Sang International for an ad that showed a model licking her lips and a caption reading, "We don't have young Japanese girls on sale right now, but we do ship more than 300 products directly from Hongkong (sic)!"

The publicity generated by GraceNet's awards has had some impact. Several companies, including IBM/Lotus, InfoUSA and Lik Sang International, have pulled so-called offensive ads after receiving the award.

The French ad, appearing in tech magazines, shows a woman using the reflection on her handheld PC to apply lipstick. The copy says that the device has "all the functions of a PC plus others you'll discover along the way."

Some disagreed with GraceNet's judgment in singling out this ad. Shown the ad by a reporter, several Bay Area women said they were not bothered by it. For example, Madeleine Clark, a San Francisco advertising veteran and now a partner in Clark Cohen Executive Search, showed it to the three women in her office. "While we think it short-sighted for the American market, no one found it offensive," Clark said.

The Compaq-Microsoft ad is a far cry from some "porno chic" ads that have the attention of the French government and the normally blase citizenry -- including one for a designer that shows a woman posing with a sheep -- but GraceNet was offended.

"This is supposed to be funny, but it's also insulting to women," said Sylvia Paull, a Bay Area Internet publicist who founded GraceNet in 1997. "Each emotion feeds on the other. You laugh and then you are insulted and you are insulted so much you laugh again."

She added, "It's ridiculous because it plays up the sexist image of women to the hilt."

GraceNet was named after Grace Hopper, whose pioneering work in computer programming and cryptography, said Paull, provides inspiration and encouragement for women in computing and related fields.

The Compaq-Microsoft ad was nominated for the DisGraceful award by Lena Diethelm of Palo Alto, a tax specialist for high-tech clients, who said, "It makes me think, 'Can't they find anything with more depth that shows more intelligence?' "

She, like Paull, is not persuaded that the more-tolerant French would not be perturbed by the ad. "The tolerance level only stays high until people complain," said Diethelm.

"I can think of an ad they could have used -- one showing a woman using one of these PCs and a man using a little black book, and the caption could be about graduating to higher technology. How about that?" said Diethelm.

Roger Frizzell, director of public relations for Compaq Computer Corp. of Houston, said: "The ad was designed to convey a sense of personal style and creativity that goes beyond the normal use of our iPAQ Pocket PC. It's one in a series of ads where the copy highlights many of the benefits and features of the iPAQ, while the photograph conveys another creative use of the device."

Microsoft did not return a call seeking comment.

On July 25, Microsoft pulled an ad for its newly released Office XP that it had posted on a Swiss Web site only a day earlier. The Associated Press reported that the ad featured a man embracing a scantily clad woman. As the man fumbled to undo her bra, a Microsoft prompt appeared asking for the man's password.

A woman's voice-over then said, "the unexpected experience -- new Office XP. "

Lisa Gurry, a Microsoft spokeswoman, said the Swiss Microsoft subsidiary produces its own advertising campaigns, which she said are typically made with "local interest and local culture in mind," according to the AP.

The brouhaha over much-more sexually explicit advertising now appearing in France, according to Business Week, involves a new government poll that found that 70 percent of the French are "more shocked than ever" by the ads and two- thirds find at least some of them objectionable.

Paull, who recently spoke in Hamburg, Germany, about GraceNet to a group of women in technology and advertising, said she heard as much from her audience.

"They felt that women in advertising did not have a voice there. They are all run by men," said Paull. "Our DisGraceful awards have received news coverage in Europe and Asia, where there is a perception it is more acceptable for women to be portrayed in sexist or secondary roles, but women in those countries object to that portrayal," she said.

She also said she does not believe that Compaq and Microsoft are sexist companies, only that they did not control the providers of European marketing. "It's an oversight," she said.